Fifty
years ago, President Johnson signed the US Wilderness Act into law. It created
a new category of lands, similar to national parks but with a higher emphasis
on nature conservation. Not only were these areas off limits to logging and
mining, they would also be off limits to developments like roads, walking
tracks and picnic areas that make life easier for park visitors. Visitors,
although welcome, would be there on nature’s terms.
On the
ground, there wasn’t much change in the management of the original 54 wilderness
areas created in 1964. The Act only protected those areas already designated as
‘roadless wilderness’ in zoning plans, some since 1924.
In
Australia, these zones — generally called ‘primitive areas’ — had also been mapped
since the 1920s in some of our oldest national parks. New England National Park,
created in the 1930s, was a large park primarily to protect the wilderness
vistas from Point Lookout.
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| Looking east towards the coast from near Point Lookout, New England NP |
Formal
legal protection of wilderness in New South Wales had to wait until 1982, when
the first wilderness areas under the National Parks and Wildlife Act were
declared. These were in Gibraltar Range National Park, west of Grafton.
Since
this time the meaning of the word 'wilderness' has come under attack on
philosophical, cultural, political and ‘justice’ grounds. Some object to the
term, claiming it is equivalent to a modern-day ‘terra nullius’. In fact, our
wilderness areas protect many significant Aboriginal sites within the context
of an undeveloped landscape, with a higher level of protection than is found in
any other land tenure.
There
are many wilderness definitions but they all have one thing in common — wilderness
is land free from development. Other defining elements are: large size,
naturalness, and management to retain the area in a wild condition, including
the exclusion of high impact uses.
These
are the areas, according to President Johnson, that would provide a glimpse of
‘the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it’. They
are also the places where ecological and evolutionary processes can play out,
giving nature a chance for the future.
- Janet Cavanaugh
